An announcement about the promise of “a larger number” of the American M1 Abrams to ward off the Russian war of aggression could come this week, as the “Wall Street Journal” reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources. According to this, US President Joe Biden is said to have promised German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in a telephone call last week that such a delivery would be checked.
Recently there had been reports that Scholz had made the delivery of the US battle tank a condition for a possible dispatch of German battle tanks. However, according to his US colleague Lloyd Austin, the new Defense Minister Boris Pistorius had made it clear that there was no such connection. Despite considerable pressure from Ukraine and partner countries, the German government has not yet made a decision on the delivery of Leopard main battle tanks to Kyiv.
The USA had previously emphasized that it did not consider the provision of the Abrams tank to be sensible for practical reasons. The US tanks would have to be transported across the Atlantic, the maintenance was more complex and they consumed too much fuel, according to the Pentagon. The tanks also swallow the aviation fuel kerosene, unlike the Leopard and many companions of the Ukrainian diesel. “It just doesn’t make sense to make this tool available to the Ukrainians at this point in time,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said a few days ago.
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